Have biopesticides come of age?

In September of 2011, Wendy Gelernter was invited to participate in a week long workshop at Lincoln University (Christchurch, New Zealand), where ten leading researchers discussed the successes, failures and future potential of biopesticide products. The just published article, "Have biopesticides come of age?" in the journal, Trends in Biotechnology, is a result of this effort.

While the authors all agreed that biopesticides (pest control products based on living microbes and the compounds they produce) have failed to meet the…